


gay doesn't only mean happy (oh, but it can)

by dannyboyy



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 11:04:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13996932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dannyboyy/pseuds/dannyboyy
Summary: "Mama, what’s gay?”Cruella rolls her eyes but smiles indulgently.“It means happy, sweetheart,” she says.“Oh,” says Carlos. “Okay.”





	gay doesn't only mean happy (oh, but it can)

**Author's Note:**

> i was having a lot of feelings while watching about the unfortunate and unacknowledged similarities between auradon and the isle, and i figured a lot of the reason the kids accept auradon's society so uncritically is that they're so revealed just to be in an environment where parental support is normal. that all kind of led to this, which is basically carlos's relationship with prejudice, and how it follows him around through his life. 
> 
> so, without further ado, enjoy!

The first time Carlos hears the word gay, it is mystery to him, with all of the taboo and titillation thereof.

He’s sitting on the floor, trying to get his tiny fingernails into the plastic seam of a broken handheld radio, and having little success. His mother is sitting at the table above, blowing hot white clouds of tobacco smoke into the air and chatting with one of her friends. Carlos doesn’t yet understand concepts like lucidity, but he does understand that some days his mother is more clear-headed than others. Today is one such day, and she holds the long, white cigarette daintily between two of her equally long fingers, framed by the sharp red claws of her acrylic nails.

They’re talking as adults do, with the words flying mystically through the air, though most of their meaning is above Carlos’s head, figuratively and literally.

One brief snatch, one arrow tail of a word, however, catches his fleeting attention, and he looks up from his radio but not up to his mother. He stares out across the floor, no longer really seeing, but listening, attention caught by another sense altogether.

“There are no handsome men on this island,”

“Well, there’s that one, with the white hair and black eyeliner, he might be to your taste, but of course he’s also--”

“Completely and irrevocably gay,” Cruella finishes boredly, tapping the ashes of her cigarette out into a dish.

Taken up in a wave of sudden interest, Carlos dares to interrupt, the words rushing out of his mouth like blood from an open wound, unbidden and necessary.

“Mama, what’s gay?”

Cruella rolls her eyes but smiles indulgently.

“It means happy, sweetheart,” she says.

“Oh,” says Carlos. “Okay.”

In a moment of positively Grecian foreshadowing, the irony of which is completely lost on an eight year old, he thinks to himself,  _ I think I’d like to be gay one day, too. _

-

The second time the word gay holds any significance to Carlos, he begins to learn it has another mean, a secret, ironic meaning to it, like the conceited of twisted lips and stifled giggles. His mother is semi-lucid today (a concept he now understands) and is in the mood to talk fashion, which for Carlos means holding scraps of fabric and pins while she sews, and trailing at her heels as she goes sweeping through the room, picking up this and that or modeling for him, seeking opinions.

“I like this quite a lot, but would do you think, pup? I drew no small amount of inspiration from Antonio Bellasais, wonderful brain, for all of his flaws. But I won’t let that happen to you, pup, even with no father figure and knowing how to sew, Mommy promises you won’t turn out gay,”

(It would not be the first or the last of her promises she broke.)

Carlos, feeling the inkling of a double entendre, dares to ask once more.

“Mom, what does gay mean?”

Cruella’s lips twist a little as she examines a faux pelt for signs of forgery, distractedly answering as she picks at a spot of matted faux fur. 

“It means to be a sexual deviant. Deplorables, sweetie. Except for some male designers, I have to excuse it their case, if only for the exceptional work they do,”

Cruella sweeps back over with a newfound inspiration, and the conversation is over, but it lingers in Carlos’s mind. Already, the idea exists in his head. To be gay and acceptable, you must also be exceptional.

Well, maybe he would become exceptional, just in case.

-

Being a teenage boy on an isolated island full of rowdy, rude teenage boys, Carlos is no longer any stranger to the word gay, its explicit meaning, any of its synonyms, or any of the stigma and ridicule it carries with it.

But one day, as he’s running amuck with the three other kids he’s gotten closest to over the years, they dive out of the crowded streets and into a patch of sunlight, and they’re all red-cheeked and breathless and laughing, and Jay looks over at him, hair fanning out, sun catching on the planes of his cheeks and the white of his smile.

And Carlos realizes, then and there, indefinitely, that he knows the meaning of the word gay more intimately than he’s ever allowed himself to admit before.

_ Well,  _ he thinks, dumbly, stupefied,  _ now I have to be exceptional _ . 

-

Auradon is Carlos’s exceptional. Or, more accurately, Auradon is Carlos’s opportunity to be exceptional and his hopeful, prayed-to wish that he might not need to be, anymore.

From the candy, to the bright sun, to the green grass, to the wide open spaces, to even the  _ dogs _ , Auradon has been slowly and surely deconstructing every notion his mother ever built in him, and he finds the process as relieving as it is terrifying. Because, if all of these other things are things she could have been wrong about, maybe she could have been wrong about  _ that  _ one, too.

He tries to mention it casually, to another teenage boy, of course, because one way or another teenage boys have thus far been his closest confidant regarding homosexuality and all its subtext.

“So, uh,” he starts, already failing at maintaining nonchalance, “you guys are so different from the story book stories we grow up with on the Isle. I mean, your kings and queens are usually kind of...different, in our parents’ version. Speaking of,” he transitions, the words rushing out, like blood and hope and open wounds, “why is it always kings and queens? Why not, like, kings and kings or queens and queens?”

He tries to pass it off as a sort of joke, like  _ What is UP with airplane food?  _ in case Ben takes it the wrong way, but he’s not entirely sure his nerves haven’t given him away.

Ben looks at him strangely, almost--God forbid--appraisingly, before answering, slowly, “Well...for all its wealth and goodness, Auradon is...old. Kind of set in its ways. Men and women, and only men and women, is kind of….one of those ways.”

He swallows nervously, glancing at Carlos, looking for signs of disapproval. Carlos is rapt, leaning forward despite himself. He’s never spoken so frankly about the  _ whys  _ of it all before, and it’s addictive to acknowledge this secret part of himself so directly, more directly than he ever has before.

“It’s one of those ways I’m hoping to change, maybe. Hopefully. One day.”

Though Ben’s voice is hopeful, and he’s proven himself nothing if not an agent for change, Carlos is well aware of what kind of reaction his  _ other  _ changes have received. Namely, him and the other three. Even as he rides the high of talking about gay people without actively condemning them, the disappointment nags at his heels like his mother’s fantastical dogs.

For all its glamor, Auradon is proving to be more like the Isle every day.

Carlos thinks about Jay, and his beautiful brown eyes, and the pilfered ruby earring he wears like a prize, and grimaces. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> there is a second part to this planned! so, rest assured, carlos will have his happy ending. :)) let me know what you think! leave me a comment and i'll see you guys next time!


End file.
